Posted
by
samzenpus
on Monday March 07, 2011 @04:51PM
from the carl-approved dept.

The people at National Geographic have built a house modeled after the one in the movie UP! for a new TV series called How Hard Can It Be?. The house flew for about an hour and reached 10,000 feet. There was no report of anyone spotting The Beast of Paradise Falls.

TFA is pretty light on technical details, like how much did the payload weigh and how much helium was required. Personally, I didn't think a cluster of balloons that small could lift a human, but I could be wrong.

TFA is pretty light on technical details, like how much did the payload weigh and how much helium was required.

As I understand it, there might be more technical details in the actual show that will be shown on National Geographic. Unfortunately, Comcast basic digital cable doesn't have Nat Geo; only higher tiers have it. Damn bundling.

What happens when the government mandates that the scarce yet valuable good is sold at an extreme loss as fast as possible? If the market were to decide how much helium cost, and not the government, a birthday balloon of helium would cost ~$200.

Surely, that is the way we are meant to use such scarce resources, right? Mandate they be sold at a 99% discount so we can empty our stockpile before 2012 and wonder why scientists can't get any?

Besides, you can probably use it to prove that coal plants emit more dangerous radiation than nuclear plants, and everyone knows that is a de facto illegal act. Just like being able to prove what the police actually did to you.

They aren't selling it "as fast as possible". There's a set amount they draw from the reserve every year.

It was wrong for the government to spend so much money distorting the helium market in the first place. Selling off the reserve is a necessary evil to correct past wrongs, and once it's complete, the market for helium will no longer be distorted.

Even if getting a house to float isn't an end goal in itself, it might increase awareness of smaller houses. Not everyone needs a mansion. If a 16x16 ft cottage is "decent living conditions" and fits better within "limited means" than the bloated houses common in U.S. suburbs, then of course Habitat should be building smaller houses.

Using time and money to create joy and whimsy is, and always will be, worthwhile. It's part of our humanity, all the arts, and a big swath of science and invention. I am glad we have people who do such things, and people who enjoy them, rather than everyone being a practical curmudgeon such as yourself, AC.

I'm sure they could misinterpret the story and come up with a way to completely flub it despite the fact that it has already provably been done. Thus ensuring loads of Aspberger's fueled hate-mail from internet experts detailing exactly how they got it wrong. Thereby allowing for sizable ratings when they eventually get around to repeating the test, this time not so egregiously screwing up the parameters.

Mythbusters already has done something similar. The myth was about helium baloons causing a person to fly away when the grab a whole string of baloons. They actually got a child to sit in a harness like chair and raiser her off the ground, I think she was four or five, tipping the scales at oh, 50 lbs more or less. Their method appeared sound, findout how many helium ballons it takes to lift 1 lb then calculate the amount of balloons it would take to lift the test subject. First result based on original cal

They tried something similar after an urban legend/myth of a military pilot that failed out of flight school. He was so desperate to fly that filled weather balloons with helium and attached them to a lawn chair. According to the myth, the man got up fairly high over restricted air space causing Air Force jets to scramble. You could imagine when the pilot radioed, "Uh, we got some guy in a lawn chair attached to weather balloons.

I have some experience flying 15 foot diameter balloons for research. If you use a regulator to control the flow of He then the regulator can get frosty. If you skip the regulator and just use a CGA580-to-hose-barb adapter, then it will ice over pretty quickly and you'll be glad you have work gloves. Our experience was that as long as there was still humidity in the air to freeze, it wouldn't get colder than 0 Celsius. Which was exactly what we expected. Oh, and skipping the regulator sounds like a good

The Up house was designed after a friend of mine's house in Berkeley. He'll kill me if I reveal the location, but the Pixar director had been eying the house for years apparently and through a mutual friend made acquaintance with my friend, the owner. They sent a team from Pixar over to take pictures and measurements and from watching the movie, the animated house is pretty darned similar. So these guys have essentially re-built a house in already standing in Berkeley and floated it. FWIW.